Venice - A Photo Essay

When it came time to explore Venice, I was most looking forward to simply walking around, camera in hand, trying to capture even a small bit of its beauty. From sunrise to sunset, Venice is constantly changing colours as the moving sun turns the deep blue waters golden at sunrise, frothy green throughout the day, swirling brown in the evening, and finally jet black again before bedtime.

7:00 am - Sunrise over the sleeping gondolas

St. Mark's Square, before the tourists awake

8:00 am - As the sun paints everything golden

A sun-kissed St. Mark's Basilica

9:45 am - Fish at the daily Rialto Market

A group of gondolas awaiting their passengers

Santa Maria della Salute Church

11:15 am - The busy Rialto Bridge

1:15 pm - One of many hidden side streets

St. Mark's clock tower overlooks the square

3:00 pm - Boats taking an afternoon siesta

5:30 pm - The sun begins to set

7:45 pm - Gondolas return home for the night

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Venice - Backpackers Need Not Apply

Regularly referred to as the most romantic city in the world, I was excited to visit Venice for the fist time, and envisioned foggy morning walks through the canals and afternoons people watching at a small cafe while gondolas glided by. Then, a few weeks before our visit while enduring rainy weather in Florence, we learned about the abnormally high water levels currently leaving a large portion of Venice underwater. My visions of the city quickly changed to thoughts of wading through thigh high water with our backpacks hoisted overhead to stay dry and teetering on a temporary walkway with hundreds of other tourists in St. Mark's square.

St. Mark's Square - beautiful and DRY when we were there!

Luckily we missed this fun (via)

Luckily the rain stayed away, the tides didn't breech the canal walls, and we had sunny bright blue skies for the duration of our three days in the floating city. Making the most of the sunshine, possibly some of the last we would have for awhile, we spent hours getting lost down narrow streets and exploring as much of the city as possible. However, wrapped up in romantic daydreams and weather concerns there was something I hadn't accounted for in our visit to Venice - the prices.

The canals

Being one of the top tourist destinations in the world, fifty thousand visitors (on average) flock to Venice per day looking for an injection of arts, culture, and extravagance. However the majority (let's say 99%) are clearly not on a backpacker's budget, or any budget, as evident by the abundance of high end hotels, swanky restaurants, and tourists carting around multiple Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Missoni shopping bags.

Many of the old buildings and palaces are now hotels

Sunset in Venice - the stuff of Romance

Although we were able to avoid the luxury designer stores (they likely wouldn't have let us in with our backpaker attire anyway) we found the prices for everyday goods as inflated as the hotel rooms and gondola rides, and naively experienced some serious sticker shock when faced with risotto for eighteen dollars per person. However it turns out that residents are also struggling to keep up with these rising prices and are deserting the city at a rate of 2000 people per year. It's estimated that by 2064, the city will essentially be a ghost town without any permanent residents - a sinking Disneyland of sorts. 

Doge's Palace - once the most powerful seat in the Republic

 

In the few grocery stores that still haunt the island we found some deals - one Euro beer, buns and mortadella for a few euros, and quality dark chocolate for a fair price, all the components of a balanced diet; however, looking for affordable restaurants or internet access revealed itself to be completely futile.

The glittering mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral

While it might be overrun with tourists and extremely expensive, there's no denying the beauty of the city. There's a reason it has earned a spot among lists of the most romantic and beautiful cities on Earth. The narrow streets and canals, especially at night, are magical to wander around, and the Piazza San Marco is the ultimate reminder of the power and opulence that the Most Serene Republic of Venice enjoyed for over 800 years. In the end, three days probably wasn't enough to see all the sites that we wanted to, but was about all that our budget could endure.

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They Loved Hercules!

Hopefully you've already checked out our post on our trip to Pompeii, but if not you can read it over here. 

Our second stop of the day after Pompeii was the similarly-devastated ancient city of Herculaneum. Although it has always lived in Pompeii's shadow, Herculaneum offers a very different (and overall, probably better) experience than Pompeii. Other than the fact that they were both Roman cities and destroyed forever by the eruption of Vesuvius, they have very few similarities.

The excavations sit just below the modern city of Ercolano

Many of the buildings are still fairly intact

Herculaneum (named after Hercules...a guy they seem to have really taken a liking to) was a coastal port city located between Naples and Pompeii. Unlike Pompeii, it was not pelted by flying rock and ash; instead, it was covered, from the bottom up, with a pyroclastic flow of boiling mud. This resulted in very little damage to the buildings, compared to those seen in Pompeii, and amazing preservation of the site itself. Many of the buildings have multiple stories and extremely well preserved frescoes, mosaics, and sculpture. There's even a lot of the wood (doors, beams, etc.) still intact after being instantly carbonized by the intense heat. 

Some of the frescoes - amazingly preserved after all this time

Pottery still where it was found

Cofferred arch details still intact

Wood instantly carbonized by the intense heat

Another nice feature of Herculaneum is the fact that it is in the middle of a bustling city. This means that it is largely inaccessible to tour groups and buses. When we arrived at Herculaneum, there were probably only 20 other people at the site which meant that we got to explore and take photos in relative peace. 

Calli by a pot!

Travis by some wall paintings!

The site is much smaller than Pompeii, mainly due to the fact that a city surrounds it on all sides, but does have some extremely impressive buildings including the College of the Augustales with its frescoes depicting myths of Hercules, and the Villa of the Papyri with its library containing 1785 carbonized papyrus scrolls. 

Small place for worship

Floor mosaics

Some beautiful columns

Much of the excavations have stopped in favor preservation efforts, mainly due to the unfortunate location of the site under the modern day city. Some buildings have even been covered back up using modern mining techniques to try and preserve them until they can be safely excavated.

Statue of Marcus Nonius Balbus - a major benefactor to Herculaneum

At the end of the day, we enjoyed each site for different reasons, but the combination of the two into one exhaustive daytrip proved to be all the more rewarding. The vastness and location of Pompeii combined with the completeness and preservation of Herculaneum are truly amazing in their own right and worth of the millions of tourists that visit them every year.

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Lens to the Past - Pompeii

In the year 79 AD, the two seemingly ordinary Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were forever immortalized by one of the most catastrophic volcanic events in recent history. Mount Vesuvius' eruption not only created two of the most fascinating and unique archaeological sites in the world, it also created a lens through which we can gaze upon how life would have been in an actual Roman city. Spectacular Roman archaeological sites are littered all across Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East, but few can provide the kind of information that Pompeii and Herculaneum can.

Pompeii's streets seem to stretch on forever

Our first stop for the day was Pompeii, easily the most visited of the two and definitely the largest site. According to most scholars, Pompeii was an affluent and important city in the Roman Empire before its extraordinary demise. While estimates vary, it seems that the city had approximately 12-15,000 inhabitants, 2000 of whom died the day of the eruption. However, gazing out over the remains it's easy to imagine the city as much larger as the buildings, pubic squares, and roads appear to stretch on forever. 

Wandering through the 2000 year old houses is extremely rewarding

The preservation and restoration of some of the buildings is amazing

Pompeii was rained down on by ash, rocks, and other debris for 6 hours on the day of the eruption, knocking down roofs and walls, and leaving the city buried under 25 feet of debris until its rediscovery 1700 years later. 

The culprit, Vesuvius, in the background

With advancements in technology and further site excavation, more and more is being learned about Pompeii, the eruption of Vesuvius, and everyday Roman life. DNA analysis continues to be run on skeletons found there, and the results shed light on everything from relatedness of people found together to general health to trends in population dynamics (heights, occupations, etc,). 

Some of the unbelievably preserved frescoes

Colors and detail in the surviving frescoes

Much of the site is still off-limits and being studied

Upon entering the site, we were immediately blown away by the sheer size of the city. Block after block seem to stretch on forever and make the city seem larger than the accepted estimates. We decided not to follow any route in particular and just wandered aimlessly through the houses, brothels, eateries, temples, and amphitheaters that have all been uncovered.

The main amphitheater of Pompeii

We were amazed at how well preserved some of the mosaics, frescoes, and architectural elements of the structures were. And then there's the stuff removed from the buildings. Plaster casts of some of the victims, sculptures, fountains, and endless amounts of pottery still remain on site, many kept in a fenced off area that you can still look into.

Some objects still remain where they were found

Sculptures found on the site

The number of intact pieces of pottery is unbelievable

The "posterboy" of Pompeii

With the new cards and passes available in the region of Campania, visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum are now cheaper and easier than ever. We decided to pick up the 5 site card which gives entry to Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae, and Boscoreale for just 20 Euro per person. Even if you only go to Pompeii and Herculaneum (which we did) you still save 2 Euro per person. 

**Don't worry, our Herculaneum post is on its way tomorrow! 

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Sorrento's Secret

Some of our favorite sites while traveling are those that we've stumbled onto accidentally. The quirky locales known only to the locals that can't be found in any guidebooks. While wandering through Sorrento looking for pizza one evening (we'd been told to try Pizzeria Da Franco by our B&B owner) we were surprised to find such a site, a block off the main square and a few hundred feet below street level.

Reclaimed by nature, it's still possible to make out the rough shape of a building forgotten in the deep valley bottom while life continues only a hundred feet away. We were intrigued so, after snapping a few photos and filling our bellies with delicious pizza, we turned to the internet to answer some of our questions.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with the lesser known or forgotten sites, there wasn't a lot of information online and what we were able to find has become a bit muddled in the translation from Italian to English. It seems that at one time this moss covered building was a mill. Initially built in the 900's to grind wheat, a sawmill was eventually added for use by Sorrento cabinet makers, and finally a public wash house.

From what we can understand, the 'Old Mill' was eventually cut off from the sea by the creation of Tasso Square in 1866 and as a result humidity in the deep valley increased to an unbearable level. As a result, the site was abandoned. However this story has a happy ending as the valley bottom flora, including a rare breed of fern, now thrive in the new micro-climate.

Hoping for a better look, and some adventure, we tried to locate a way down into the valley but came up empty. From reports online, it seems the area is completely cut off from the streets above and therefore impossible to visit. Although we were a bit disappointed, perhaps it's best to leave the 'Old Mill' to nature and simply admire the site from above.

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